Research
Current interests include: artificial intelligence, nonmonotonic logics, SAT, constraint programming, databases, medical informatics, and document processing.
Past interests include: various aspects of logic, and combinatorics.
ON-LINE PAPERS
LINKS TO TALKS, SLIDES, A BOOK, AND OTHER SCIENCE-RELATED DOCUMENTS.
Personal
For additional visual information visit our Picture Gallery.
For those who do not doubt that the time is passing Photos of the special session at the recent ISAIM.
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For an instant educational (?) opportunity visit this page.
For those in need of scientific inspiration: The shoes of Alfred Tarski.
For those that got to this page by error and really look for Viktor Marek (also known as Victor Marek), here is a page that may help.
Applications in gaming
One application of the same technology that is used in our investigations of van der Waerden numbers is the design of logic and numeric puzzles. The effort of my colleagues (Raphael Finkel and Mirek Truszczynski) and myself (see also our paper on Constraint Lingo in my list of publications above) resulted in adding a new element to puzzles such as Number Place (a.k.a SuDoKu) and others based on concepts such as Latin Squares (with additional constraints), combinatorial configurations etc. The novel element is that the Artificial Intelligence tools used in the design and execution allow for generation not only of puzzles and their solutions, but also of hint sequences. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first ones that offer such form of those puzzles. Anyone seriously interested in SuDoKu knows that the current generation of SuDoKu has a deficiency: if one is stuck, the only way to move on is to consult solution. We offer an alternative; showing the place that needs to be investigated without giving away its content.
Moreover, we can create Sudoku and similar puzzles of very different degree of difficulty; very easy as those of Dell's Number Place puzzles, up to puzzles extremely hard for humans (even though still 9x9). We can also generate puzzles in different sizes, for instance 16x16. True amateurs of superhuman puzzles (25x25 or 36x36 - yes, we can produce these monsters as well) are kindly requested to contact us directly.
Kids can train in Sudoku too; we offer 4x4 puzzles especially designed for kids.
As a service to the community we publish a daily Sudoku puzzle 365/365. The puzzle is avallable here for your puzzle enjoyment.
A book resulting from this effort is available at the independent
publisher location:
Puzzles Galore Volume I (Sudoku and other
puzzles)
A page with resources for sudoku designers is available here. It is a work in progress, please visit and contribute.
Finally, read a thought that strikes me as particularly profound:
Before you speak, ask yourself: is it kind, is it necessary,
is it true, does it improve on the silence?
Attributed to Sai Baba
Last modified: March 29, 2008